If you patent a standard, then it will cost to use this standard.
Solutions that cannot meet this cost will find alternatives. Therefore
the standard will lose influence. Given the growing importance of free
software as a solution in powering the internet, any encumberance of the
W3C standards requiring excessive costs will simply cause a new
standards body to appear. There will be a resultant split negating much
of the advantages of having standards-making organizations in the first
place.
Thanks for reading!